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November 1, 1999
Merriam-Webster Online
http://www.m-w.com/
GRADE LEVEL: K-12, Parents, and Professionals
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CONTENT:
The Merriam-Webster site features on-line Dictionaries, a Thesaurus, Word Games, a Word of the Day, and lots more for older students! The Word Central sub-site is a fun-filled place where elementary level kids can explore all kinds of fun things to do with words.
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AESTHETICS:
The main Merriam-Webster site has a professional layout appropriate to studious work, and lots of bright colors and goofy images make Word Central appealing to a younger audience.
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ORGANIZATION:
The main Merriam-Webster pages feature a navigation bar at the left. At Word Central, navigate by entering the Hallway and clicking on doorways that lead to activities.
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REVIEW:
Merriam-Webster has put together a useful resource for all grade levels. The main site is excellent for middle school or high school classrooms and has tons of activities plus some interesting language histories, including the sources of slang from bygone eras and a brief history of English. Teachers can subscribe to the Word of the Day for vocabulary building and let students solve the daily Word Game or its archive of past puzzles. Elementary classrooms can access Word Central from the Merriam-Webster main page -- look for a bee icon. Here, students can create word puzzles and secret messages that can be e-mailed to other kids to decode, making the site a useful resource for e-mail exchanges with other classrooms. The Daily Buzzword includes words appropriate to upper elementary grades and can also be subscribed to for vocabulary-building exercises. Don't forget to bookmark the dictionaries, or better yet put a dictionary button on your home page.
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